LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN

LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN

Adrienne BoettingerFriday,17 May 2013

The Snap:

I’ve often thought I was born in the wrong era. Sometimes I think I should’ve been born in the heyday of the women’s suffrage or liberation movements and other times I think I belonged in 19th Century Prince Edward Island. Basically, I either want to explore my feminine rage or be Anne of Green Gables. But this past week, it’s as if I’ve woken up in a different era. If it wasn’t sexual assault in the military, it was the deterioration of freedom of the press or discrimination against groups for their political leanings. It was like all the bad parts of the 1950’s through 1970’s without the fun parts like good music or recreational substances.

The Download:

For the love of all that is holy, someone needs to slap the Administration upside the head. Every time I read or watch the news, they’re giving the scandal-obsessed right more ammunition. People are talking about the Curse of the Second Term which frankly sounds like we’re in the Mystery Machine for some caper with Scooby and the Gang and we’ll find out that it really wasn’t Eric Holder at all, it was Karl Rove in a mask! And he would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!

With the 24-hour noose cycle promoting controversial sound bites more than actual journalism, who knows what’s truly going on, but even if it’s not as bad as the wetting-themselves-with-glee right-wing pundits would have it, it still doesn’t look good. It doesn’t seem to matter that the Inspector General report into the IRS activities hasn’t shown actual wrongdoing or that the IRS also targeted left-wing groups (and unlike the ones on the right, at least one of the liberal groups lost its tax-exempt status). Watch the news and all you’ll hear is that feds were unfairly targeting conservatives and… the liberal media? Politics makes strange bedfellows.

My mother’s answer to the question of “how can we stop our government from phone-tapping, investigating us for our beliefs, and allowing rampant sexual assault” probably would be to let women take a turn running this joint. Her feistiness has peaked to where she may be more of an outraged feminist than I am, and her answer for questions of the why-is-everything-so-awful variety are usually because there’s not enough women in power.

Although I don’t think men have the monopoly on poor decisions, maybe she has a point in that doing things the way they’ve always been done, isn’t working. More points-of-view and a variety of backgrounds might help us come up with a better way than swinging between over- and under- reaching governance. It’s just an idea. My other idea is to replace Congress with my dog. I don’t think he’d make worse decisions and he’s way cuter. Plus if anyone actually missed congressional press conferences, C-span could film loops of my dog licking himself which really when you get down to it, is pretty much the same as what Congress does.